


Four Scotch Whiskeys and a Side of Fate

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Banter, Humor, M/M, Meet-Cute, Romance, Walk Into A Bar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22063063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: Roy is expecting to spend another Friday night in the company of his best friend (scotch) and his worst friend (Jean Havoc).That is not what Roy gets.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 79
Kudos: 1498
Collections: FMA Gift Exchange 2019





	Four Scotch Whiskeys and a Side of Fate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleBlueFox19](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleBlueFox19/gifts).



> Your first question is probably "WHY?", and your second question is probably "WHY IS THIS SO _LONG_?"
> 
> The answer to the first question is that Zey wanted to participate in the gift exchange but then wasn't able to, so I made them a gift! :) And also that I took "Modern AU" in a generally rational way, and "substance addiction" in a REALLY NOT RATIONAL one. It's… who I am as a person.
> 
> The answer to the second question is that this, too, is who I am as a person.
> 
> Huge, huge special thanks to [Mellomailbox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellomailbox/pseuds/Mellomailbox) for giving this a read for me! ;A; ♥ I touched on some things in here that are out of my lane, and if at any point I veered far enough that you'd be swearing at me from your car, please tell me so that I can fix them. ♥
> 
> Content warnings: there's some flippancy about alcoholism in this one, and I'm like 98% sure it's not serious, but the whole thing takes place in a bar, so if that sounds iffy for you, please stay safe. ♥ There are also… Gratuitous Tolkien References™. whoIamasaperson.png. I'm sorry.

The familiar door to the bathroom in Roy’s favorite dive bar was blazoned with what probably qualified as artistic graffiti if you were under twenty-five and above a given threshold of hipness. Roy was probably closer to a hip _replacement_ than to that threshold, but he’d learned the hard way, over and over, that you couldn’t win them all. The guy who ran this place was really all right, other than his taste in décor, and that mattered more.

Apparently the universe either had a vendetta against Roy tonight or a strong determination to force him to look on the bright side, and the fact that Roy sometimes couldn’t tell those apart probably said everything. When he opened the bathroom door in question, the motion swiftly revealed a gorgeous young blond wearing tight black jeans and a tight black T-shirt, with his hair up in a long ponytail.

The gorgeous young blond almost jumped out of his skin—which would have been a terrible pity, as it happened, given that his skin looked delectable. Not in a cannibalistic way, or at least not a _strictly_ cannibalistic way; more in a _those clothes would look even better on my carpet, and your hair would look even better on my bedsheets, and I’d like to map out every inch of you as slowly as you could stand_ sort of sense.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” the blond said, but he clapped a hand over his heart as he said it, which was so incongruously, old-fashionedly small-town charming that Roy’s heart clenched in answer.

Evidently it wasn’t all melodrama, either; the blond actually swayed on his feet a bit, and it wasn’t even the ulterior motives for once that made Roy step forward and set both hands on his shoulders to steady him.

“I’m so sorry,” Roy said. He hadn’t meant those words in a while. Interesting. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” the blond said. “Just high-strung as hell. My bad.”

Roy was slightly ashamed to admit that he kept his hands on the very, _very_ well-shaped shoulders underneath them for a few seconds longer than necessary before he withdrew them and stepped back again.

The blond didn’t look offended, though: rather, he looked Roy up and down. Slowly. With intent.

Like that, then.

Roy wanted a lot of things. He wanted some hope, and a reprieve, and a core of inner strength much more formidable than the one he’d built so far. He wanted a new liver, and he frequently wanted a new life.

Just now, though, Blondie had slingshotted himself past all of the practicalities and right up to the top of that list.

“At risk of sounding like a Hallmark movie,” Blondie said, “what’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?”

“I’m an alcoholic,” Roy said. “What’s your excuse?”

“I work here,” the blond said.

Roy paused. “Is it your first day?”

Blondie was not impressed. “Huh. I take it you’re a regular? Yeah, my hiring stuff just went through. Bars’re all more or less the same, though.”

Not all of them were. This bar, Roy happened to know, was the only one in the county that was entirely up to ADA code requirements. It was the only one in the whole state—and possibly further than that—configured with levels and ramps sufficient to allow a person in a wheelchair to _run_ the bar, rather than just sitting at it. Roy knew that part because he had designed most of those modifications himself. It wasn’t too often in life that one was hired to help construct a dear friend’s dream project, and Roy had taken it about as seriously as he’d taken anything in the years since Hughes had died.

He’d known for a long time, of course, that Jean didn’t hire just anyone, but this encounter rather succinctly proved it.

Roy stepped back smoothly to clear the doorway again and gestured in a way that he hoped looked as regal as it felt. “I didn’t mean to get in your way.”

Blondie now looked about as impressed as Riza had sounded the time in college that Roy had called her at three in the morning near to tears because he’d managed to lock himself out of his own laptop, and he had a paper due at ten.

Blondie said, “It’s no problem,” though, rather than “It is a constant amazement to me that you have survived to the age of twenty,” so at least that was a step in the right direction.

Then Blondie followed up with, “See you in a minute, then, huh?”, and that was even better.

It was hardly much more than a minute—Roy had really only retreated to the bathroom in the first place to wash his hands, since he’d come straight from work, and he’d originally been planning to order wings—but Blondie had bustled off somewhere by the time he returned to the bar and slung himself down onto one of his usual stools. It was one of the seats near the corner, close to the ramp leading a half-level up so that wheelchair users could pull right up to the bar on that side. There were shorter stools stacked up by the wall on that side, which could be borrowed and brought over for able-bodied friends. This position turned Roy into something of an airport controller when the place got busy later in the night some nights; word was spreading through the community about the amenities, but there were still quite a lot of people who hadn’t had time to visit and get the lay of the land just yet. This particular place at the bar was ideal for flagging down the people asking rhetorical questions about how to access different areas, so that he could direct them towards their destination.

It was still pretty quiet so far tonight—which was fine; Fridays tended to fill up a little slower, since a lot of people were worn out from the workweek. Roy put an elbow on the bar, enjoyed the way his mental recording of Hughes’s voice said _“Well, I_ never _!”_ in an affected Southern belle accent, and tried to decide if he felt motivated to go fetch himself one of the newspapers over on the magazine stand. Jean had bought some pretty good subscriptions, and Roy had donated as many of those tragic gilt-leafed hardbound classics as he’d been able to dig up from the set he’d had as a kid. They had very nearly had to cover each other’s mouths to prevent themselves from whooping aloud the first time they saw someone sit down with some Mark Twain and a cocktail, but they both liked to pretend that they’d known it would work.

Maybe Roy could use a judicious selection of book titles to flirt with Blondie.

On the other hand, maybe that was a _terrible_ idea, given that his first and only and utterly untenable idea was to grab the copy of _Moby Dick_.

Before he could rack his beleaguered brain for a better thought— _any_ better thought; beggars couldn’t be choosy, but Roy was on his proverbial knees—a flicker of motion and a soft thump garnered his attention.

Blondie returned, be-aproned and settled easily behind the bar, with one foot up on the raised section of the flooring. He looked like the best Captain Morgan ad never aired, but Roy knew better than to throw rum at this situation if he wanted either of them to survive.

“So,” Blondie said. “What’s your poison?”

“I think I need to start with a soft pitch,” Roy said. “Surprise me?”

Blondie leaned against the bar, looking disproportionately smug. Roy could think of a hundred-thousand ways to wipe that look off of his face and replace it with one that was even more appealing. “I’m going to need to see some ID.”

Roy raised an eyebrow, and then the second one, just in case the first hadn’t been sufficient. “I’m thirty-five.”

“That’s what they all say,” Blondie said.

Roy folded his arms on the bar and leaned forward—and kept leaning when Blondie didn’t retreat, until their faces were within five inches of each other. Kissing distance. Roy knew quite well that he was devastating this close. “If this is a ploy to get my name and my address,” he said, “you could always ask.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Blondie said. “And don’t flatter yourself. I’m only out to steal your identity. On that note, if you don’t have your driver’s license on you, Social Security card is just fine.”

“Here,” Roy said, fishing out the fancy platinum credit card—there was a remote chance he was a _tiny_ bit vain, on rare occasions, when the moon was full and the stars aligned and the barometric pressure was just right; and also sometimes when he breathed—and tossing it across the bar. “Much easier this way.”

Blondie picked it up. It did not escape Roy’s notice that he skimmed the front, which—of course—had Roy’s name on it. “Damn. Never had anybody offer to be my sugar daddy in the middle of a shift before. Guess this new job’s looking up.”

“I only accept tasteful nudes,” Roy said. “The more they look like Renaissance art, the better.”

Blondie snickered, tapping the corner of the card against the edge of the bar. “Challenge accepted. Still gonna need your ID, Mr. Mustang.”

Roy, however, had more cards to play: he’d just caught sight of a familiar gleam of black chrome, so he leaned on one elbow to look past Blondie.

“Hey, Jean,” he called. “Your new employee’s giving me a hard time about me trying to keep you in business.”

Blondie’s face fell, and he spun around, clutching the credit card to his chest like a tiny plastic shield, but Jean was already laughing as he wheeled his way over.

“Tough shit, Roy,” he said. Good to know that all of those years of devoted friendship had well and truly paid off. “If you’re trying to mooch a free drink off of me, you’re going to have to do better than that.”

Roy made a point of collapsing dramatically on the bar. “How could you even _think_ that about me? I never; the audacity; my impugned honor and precious reputation; so on and so forth.”

Jean reached across the bar to pat his shoulder. “Roy,” he said, “meet Ed. Ed… I’m sorry.”

“Just for that,” Roy said, “I’m going to go back to the bathroom and pull every single paper towel out of the dispenser.”

“Like hell you are,” Jean said. “You’d never risk inconveniencing innocent people to get personal revenge.”

Roy stared at him.

Jean smirked back.

Roy glanced over at Ed, who was watching all of this in what looked like either horror or half-suppressed amusement. There was a chance it was a bit of both.

“Can you believe,” Roy said, “that I still show up here and spend my hard-earned money when he treats me like this?”

“Tragic,” Ed said.

Roy turned to Jean, not that he expected anything out of Jean except more and greater undeserved abuse. “Are you going to vouch for my age, or what?”

“Hell, no,” Jean said. “For one thing, you know damn well that it’s policy to ask regardless; and for another, I know for a fact that you have a hilariously bad driver’s license photo that you’re trying to hide.”

“I’m never coming here again,” Roy said.

“Lying is a bad look on you,” Jean said.

“Nothing is a bad look on me,” Roy said, “with the solitary and indescribably painful exception of the ungodly lighting at the DMV.”

“C’mon,” Ed said. He was still holding on to Roy’s credit card—although at least he’d stopped pressing it to his chest over his heart like a makeshift barrier or a long-awaited love letter, and Roy didn’t know which was worse. “Everybody has a bad driver’s license photo. They probably hire specifically for that. Let’s just get it over with.”

Roy favored Ed with a baleful look before very, very slowly extracting his wallet from the pocket of his slacks again. Ed would regret that very soon. They would all regret it. At least he had that as a consolation.

He flicked his license out of his wallet as dramatically as humanly possible and then smacked it down on top of the bar. He garnered himself an extremely nice, crisp sound on impact. He raised an eyebrow, and then he laid all five fingertips on top of the card, slid it across the bar, and withdrew his hand.

“Read ’em and weep,” he said.

Jean leaned in even though he’d seen it at least a hundred times. One of the nights at Roy’s place, more years back than either of them probably wanted to contemplate, _Jean_ had been the one drunk enough to make bizarre requests, which had included asking to see Roy’s license nine times in a row. He’d laughed until he’d cried every single time.

“Holy shit,” Ed said, eyes going rounder and wider and even more beautiful. “Is that even _you_?”

“Regrettably,” Roy said.

Ed blinked, looked up at him, looked back down at the card, squinted, looked up at him again, and then set Roy’s credit card down on the bar directly next to his ID to compare the names.

“Witchcraft,” he said.

“Anything is possible at the DMV,” Roy said. “Or, as I prefer to call it, the Demon-Monster Village.”

Jean snickered. “How long have you been working on that one?”

“Shut up,” Roy said.

Ed pushed both cards back across the bar to him, looking more than slightly awed. “You want me to run you a tab?”

“Perfect,” Roy said.

“Great,” Ed said. “You ever gotten pulled over and made a cop do a double-take?”

Roy was busy cramming the bane of his existence back into his wallet, but the answer to that was fairly self-evident: “Are you implying that someone of my unassailable moral character could conceivably be caught speeding?”

Ed grinned. “Or you could’ve had a taillight out. But you look like the kinda guy who likes to do it fast sometimes.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Jean said. “I’m gonna get out of here.”

Ed’s cheeks had gone slightly pink, but other than that, he looked completely unrepentant. “Sorry. You know what I mean.”

“Get him scotch,” Jean said. “Pick a slightly cheaper one every time he finishes a glass. Lots of ice—keeps him here longer, and he gets less dehydrated, too.”

“I’m touched,” Roy said. “I didn’t know you were campaigning to be my guardian angel.”

Jean smirked, because while he was undeniably an angel of sorts, he happened to be the universe’s single worstone. “I don’t think it’s ‘campaigning’ if there isn’t enough money in the world to pay anyone else to do the job.”

“Fair,” Roy said, because it was.

Ed glanced between them one more time, likely as a last-ditch attempt to ascertain if the mention of scotch had been the first serious part of this entire conversation, and then half-shrugged and proceeded over to the vast, tiered tower of gleaming bottles on an island in the center of the bar.

Ed had to stretch up on his tiptoes before he could even graze his fingers against any of the glass. This was a problem firstly because it drew Roy’s attention directly to how staggeringly perfect his ass was; and secondly because it made Roy want to bundle him up in a fleecy blanket and boop him on the nose even if the offending finger got bitten off in the process; and thirdly because it begged a brand-new question.

“I thought you weren’t going to do it up like that,” Roy said to Jean, gesturing to the display. “How are you even getting to the ones at the top?”

“Well, first off,” Jean said, “I’m not an idiot—”

“Debatable,” Roy said.

“Get bent,” Jean said cheerfully. “Anyway, most of the stuff at the tip of the pyramid is shitty tequila that’ll get ordered once every two weeks, tops. And if it does—” He reached under the bar, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth for a second as he rummaged, and came up with…

A modified version of one of those giant plastic grabber claws.

Jean was, of course, utterly undeterred by the way that Roy stared at him like he’d just extracted a contraption from Willy Wonka’s factory still dripping with questionable chocolate.

“You can keep all seventeen of your sardonic opinions to yourself,” Jean said, demonstrating its grabbiness with far too much delight altogether. “When it’s not serving its purpose for liquor bottles, it’s great for—” In the nick of time, Roy figured out the punchline and leaned back, but Jean was still damn fast. “—pinching your _lil babyface cheeks_!”

Roy attempted to bat the thing aside without falling off of his stool and cracking his head open on the hardwood, and then tried ducking, and then tried holding onto the edge of the bar with both hands and leaning back until the stool creaked ominously.

“How sad,” he said, “that I have zero friends in the entire world, because they’re all either dead or dead to me.”

“Poor baby,” Jean said. “With his lil babyface ch—”

“Uh.” Ed had returned with a very-much-needed scotch on the rocks. “Sorry. Is this okay?”

“You are the answer to all of my prayers,” Roy said, reaching for it.

“He’s an atheist,” Jean said in what could only be characterized as a stage-whisper.

“I don’t see why that changes anything,” Roy said.

It didn’t stop Ed from passing him the drink, which was the second-most important thing. The first-most was that their fingertips brushed around the glass, and Ed had gorgeous hands.

“Is that why nobody’s applying for the guardian angel job?” Ed asked.

Roy swirled the glass to make the ice spin. “I suspect it has more to do with my reckless self-destructive tendencies and piss-poor attitude.”

“Got it in one,” Jean said.

Roy raised the glass towards him.

Ed raised an eyebrow and leaned one elbow on the bar. “Guess I don’t know you very well yet.”

Jean pointed a reprimanding finger at Roy, with the other hand settling on the handrim of one wheel. “Hey. Don’t you mess with him. I like this kid, and if you make him quit, I’m gonna kill you.”

Roy drank deeply from the glass and held it out to toast him again. “You’re going to have to hurry up if you want to beat me to it.”

Jean rolled his eyes, then the wheels, and off he went, leaving Roy with a slightly bewildered-looking blond barkeep. That was without a doubt his new favorite alliteration.

Ed’s eyes narrowed, which turned the bewilderment into a much less-appetizing suspicion. “Are you actually a danger to yourself? I don’t think I’d feel right serving you if you are.”

“I’m more restrained than I act around here,” Roy said, which was even mostly true. “It’s just a nice way to cap out a long week.”

“Yeah,” Ed said, still eyeing him. “Nothing starts the weekend off right like a good hangover. You told me you were an alcoholic.”

“I was being glib,” Roy said.

“Sure you were,” Ed said. He worked his mouth for another second before he curled one corner of it up into a smirk. “I’ve got an eye on you. Mind your manners.” He rapped his knuckles against the bar and ghosted off to greet another patron who had settled down around the other side.

Roy sat back, narrowly managing to resist the urge to preen as he started nursing his very chilly scotch. Good start to the night. They didn’t call them ‘golden opportunities’ for nothing.

  


* * *

  


Roy hated flagging down anyone who worked in the service industry—it felt disparaging, for one thing; and he’d been there, for another, and there was always something else that you’d been on your way to do, which you had to keep on the top of your head while your latest distraction added something different to the list.

So when his glass was empty—other than the dregs trapped under the melting ice—he drew out his phone and paged over to the weird sci-fi novel that he’d been reading on the subway lately and settled down to wait until Ed noticed on his own time.

Either it really wasn’t long, or this book had gotten so dull that he was skimming. Both were possible.

“So,” Ed said, drumming his fingers on the bar in a way that brought Roy’s attention right back to the mesmerizing tendons in the back of his hand. “How much cheaper should I go?”

“Surprise me,” Roy said. He arched an eyebrow, and then a grin—he couldn’t exactly sit here in front of a feisty little number like this and not even tease him _once_ , after all. “Or just go for anything you can reach.”

“Oh, good,” Ed said, eyes narrowing. His bottom lip pushed out, and Roy’s heart just about stopped; but then he accidentally demonstrated much more mercy by changing course from the pout and grimacing instead. “Just have to remember where I saw that paint thinner earlier. Great nose on that stuff. You’ll love it.”

Roy tended to laugh more on Friday nights here than he did the rest of the week combined, but usually there was a lot more alcohol involved.

  


* * *

  


Ed did not serve him paint thinner, regardless of how much he might have deserved it.

Jean brought him wings, though.

“I didn’t order these,” Roy said.

“I know,” Jean said. “But you were thinking about it, and you’re never smart enough to eat on your way over. I can’t have you passing out on the floor and making this place look sleazy.”

“You are,” Roy said, “without a doubt, the single most magnanimous and loving friend I have ever been fortunate enough to have.”

“Hey, Ed,” Jean called over his shoulder. “Get ’im another one; he’s still talking like he lost a fight with the makers of Scrabble.”

“Hasbro,” Roy said.

“What?” Jean said.

Ed had sauntered back over, eyes on Roy, and they were still so bright and so warm and so un-judgmental despite the circumstances that Roy’s heart felt… full.

“Never mind,” Roy said. “On a scale of one to ‘crying with my mouth under the bathroom faucet’, how spicy did you make these?”

“If I told you,” Jean said, “it would ruin the surprise.”

“I hate surprises,” Roy said.

“I know,” Jean said, shoving the plate closer to him. “Are you feeling lucky, punk?”

“No,” Roy said. It was the truth. He had, without a doubt, used up this entire week’s allotment of karma meeting Ed tonight, not to mention not having managed to scare him off just yet. “I don’t think I’m very punk, either.”

“Punk is a state of mind,” Ed said, pushing a new glass, brimming with what was presumably a new and yet-cheaper scotch, across the bar to him. It slowed and stopped centimeters from the edge of the plate of wings, which made Roy’s stomach flip in a manner entirely unbecoming of his age and dignity alike. It wasn’t his fault that casual competence was so damn hot, but his body could at least have _tried_ to demonstrate some restraint about the whole thing. “Are those good?” Ed asked. “Should I be recommending ’em to customers?”

“The ones that Jean makes for other people are excellent,” Roy said, “because he is a maestro of pub food if I’ve ever met one.”

“Kissing my ass is not going to get you an answer,” Jean said.

Roy sat back and gazed at a dish full of almost-certain likelihood to scald off his tastebuds. “You can’t blame a guy for trying.”

Ed leaned forward, arms folded on the bar. “Can I try one?”

Roy pulled the plate away from him, sparing a glare for Jean. “I don’t want you to get hurt your first day on the job, here.”

Jean was smirking. That was actually a good sign—it tipped the scales significantly in favor of _devious, if unspeakably weird, plan to get Ed close enough to share Roy’s food_ and away from _extremely transparent ploy to ignite Roy’s mouth with a heretofore unimaginable scale of excruciation_.

Ed said, “I’m pretty much immune to everything in the habanero range and below,” which was also rather encouraging in the moment, even if it begged questions related to several stories that would probably make the hairs on the back of Roy’s neck stand up.

Still, caution had saved his ass before, so he kept his eyes on Jean as he very slowly slid the plate back towards Ed.

“I hope none of us regrets this,” he said, still looking squarely at Jean.

“Hey, man,” Jean said. “Life’s short.”

Roy’s was going to be a little shorter still, because Ed had just snatched up a wing, devoured it in two bites, licked his lips, and then licked his fingertips. It was either a religious experience or the beginning of the end.

Roy supposed he should be counting himself lucky that his heart hadn’t stopped outright.

“These are really good,” Ed said. He stuck his index fingertip back into his mouth and sucked on it. Roy felt the cold brush of death, and what a way to _go_. “Is that honey in the sauce?”

“Yup,” Jean said. “Mom’s recipe.”

“Little bit of a kick,” Ed said, turning to Roy with a hint of a challenge in his grin—that was almost as bad as what he’d been doing with his tongue and his fingers. That was almost as bad as the way his hair caught the light. “But I bet you can handle it.”

“I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your help,” Roy said, raising the glass to him this time.

“Sure you can,” Ed said. “Leave a good tip.”

He winked.

The ponytail whipped behind him as he spun on his heel and sauntered off to help another newcomer who had just sidled up to the bar.

Roy’s face must have said everything, because Jean laughed until his ribs must have hurt like _hell_.

  


* * *

  


Hell, as it happened, was a nearly-adequate solitary word to describe the state of Roy’s mouth, the state of his stomach lining, and his nebulous plan for the length of revenge to which he would be subjecting one Jean Havoc.

Eight of the remaining wings artfully arranged on his plate had, as promised, had a slight kick and a pleasantly sweet finish.

The final one had been marinated in the spit of a demon straight from the lowest circle of the pit, and had almost certainly copulated with several ghost peppers on its way up to where it had settled on this godforsaken piece of ceramic.

Roy’s reservations about flagging down barkeeps had abruptly gone out the window; the only spark of good fortune in this whole escapade was that Ed immediately correctly interpreted his frantic gestures as a plea for water, and brought it cold and in quantity in extremely good time.

“You,” Roy managed to gasp out after draining half the glass, “are a godsend.”

“Not even close,” Ed said while Roy went back to chugging, although he looked pretty pleased about it, at least as far as Roy could see through the haze of agony. “I’m just trying to set a record for first day’s tips. My friend Paninya works here part-time, and she told me Jean never takes any portion of ’em for himself, so on nights that you work with him, you just make _bank_. Figure I’ve got a pretty good shot as far as the math goes.”

Roy emptied the glass. He didn’t even feel too tipsy, although that could have been because everything tasted like capsaicin and pain to the point of obscuring other sensations.

“Let your hair down,” he said, “and I’d wager you’ll do even better.”

Ed wrinkled his nose. “It’ll get in the drinks.”

“Not if you tie the top part back,” Roy said. He realized too late that he was making a supremely unhelpful gesture with both hands to try to illustrate the style he meant. “I have sisters. I can… well, only if you—” His brain caught up with his big, big, stupid mouth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—of course it’s perfectly all right if—”

“How many sisters?” Ed asked.

Roy held his mouth shut by force of will this time. It still felt tingly and stinging and singed at intervals, and sometimes all at once, which made him want to hurl himself down a YouTube hole about fire-swallowing, but at least he wasn’t talking first and thinking later.

“Four,” he said. He’d waited so long trying to avoid further filter overrides that it sounded like he’d been making up a number in the silence, so he added, “Tessa, Alyssa, Vanessa, and Charmaine.”

On second thought, that sounded even more fake, despite the relatively minor consideration that it was true.

Ed was only raising an eyebrow, though. “Were any of them squirmers? I don’t want you ripping my hair out. You’ve had three scotches and whatever the fuck was in the last of the wings.”

Roy was glad he’d kicked the filter like a malfunctioning radiator: it seemed to have gotten the memo, as this time it prevented him from saying _Sweetheart, if I pull your hair, it’s going to be a_ lot _more fun than that_.

“All of them were fidgeters,” Roy said. “I have a lot of practice. Paninya’s a riot, by the way. Ask her about the night with the guy who brought his acoustic guitar.”

Ed cast a glance around the bar. By some stroke of unprecedented good fortune, all of the other customers looked preoccupied.

Ed gave Roy one more assessing look and then—miracle of miracles—half-turned, reached up, and started dragging the elastic tie out of his hair.

Roy actually had to clench his hands together underneath the bar to keep them stable. Despite the fact that he’d quite recently downed an entire glass of water, his mouth was staggeringly dry.

Pale gold cascaded down over Ed’s shoulders, twisting and rolling and shimmering and unfurling in a way that Roy couldn’t help but characterize as equal parts angelic and pornographic. He was way too drunk for this, and also not _nearly_ drunk enough.

“Okay,” Ed said, as if he had not just brought the entire world to a screeching halt, flipped it upside-down, grabbed it by its ankles, shaken it for loose change, and stolen its Altoids and its housekeys, “make it quick.”

It occurred to Roy that the odds of Ed actually believing Roy’s assurances that this would improve the tips were extremely low. It occurred to Roy that Ed was either now sincerely hoping that Roy was going to proceed directly from percentage-based tipping to sugar daddy territory, or he wanted to feel Roy’s hands in his hair almost every bit as much as Roy wanted to put them there.

Given that Roy was going to get his wish regardless, he didn’t see much point in quibbling over details.

He gathered himself, sat up as straight and as steadily as he was capable of, reached forward, hesitated, drew a breath, and delved his fingers into the opulent spill of breathtaking hair trailing all the way down Ed’s shoulder-blades.

He couldn’t afford to get distracted by the mouth-watering outlines of the shoulder-blades in question, as sinfully implied as they might have been by the tightness of Ed’s shirt. He had a job to do here.

Ed’s hair proved every bit as silky and soothing and buttery-soft as he could have dreamed of. He couldn’t help himself—imperative towards quickness or no, he had to drag his fingers through its length at least once to feel it glide over his hands all the way to the ends.

Ed…

Shivered.

Just the slightest bit, but _slightest_ sure counted at a time like this.

Roy was a bit too far gone in just about every sense of the phrase to stop himself from grinning.

He managed to rein himself in enough to get to work after that, but the work itself was so rewarding that it hardly felt fair. He hooked the tips of his index fingers under the top layer of Ed’s hair, working backwards from the temples at each side, and then separated that handful of gold into three segments. He French-braided just far enough to incorporate a few more sections from each side, and then braided the rest of it regularly, leaving the bulk of Ed’s hair as devastatingly free-flowing as before.

“May I borrow your tie?” he asked.

Ed offered it up, tried to speak, discovered that his voice was rasping indecipherably, cleared his throat, and managed, “Sure.”

He held it out.

Roy let their fingertips brush again as he took it, said “Thank you,” and then snapped it neatly around the tail end of his handiwork.

When he withdrew his hands, Ed turned to him, eyes like firebrands yet again. “Is it okay? If I look like an idiot, you have to take it out.”

“You look like a Viking,” Roy said, which was true. “Or like a Lord of the Rings elf.”

“Legolas or Haldir?” Ed asked, and then immediately said, “Don’t answer that,” and then immediately said, “Fine” and swept off to attend another patron who had just stood up and shouldered on his coat.

Ed stayed busy elsewhere for a few minutes after that, but watching him work with his hair gleaming like this was at least ten thousand times finer a pastime than the sci-fi novel, so Roy doodled with his fingertip in the condensation on his water glass and waited, perfectly content.

That was a marvel on its own, wasn’t it? Usually he wasn’t exactly sitting here because he felt at peace with the universe, but tonight…

Tonight, he’d been in precisely the right place at precisely the right time.

Tonight, he still was.

He tried not to look _too_ much like he was staring as Ed eventually made his way back around the circuit of the bar and returned to Roy.

“Mixed reviews,” Ed said. “I guess the tips will tell. But—wait. I don’t have a control group, because this is night one. _Damn_.”

“Glorfindel,” Roy said.

Ed blinked at him.

Then Ed flushed to the roots of his beautiful hair.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “You’ve read _The Silmarillion_ , haven’t you? More than once. You’re the more-than-once type. _Fuck_ , Al’s gonna want to keep you. Get bent. Where’s Jean? I think I gotta quit.”

Roy set an elbow on the bar, rested his chin on his hand, and smirked.

“Would you mind terribly getting me another scotch before you go?” he asked.

“Fuck you,” Ed said, ever so slightly breathlessly. “And not literally. Paint thinner’s too slow; you’re getting bleach.”

“Please ask if Jean will serve me some Tide Pods,” Roy said. “On a nice plate. I’ll pay extra.”

“Coming right up,” Ed said.

  


* * *

  


The next scotch was mediocre, but it was most certainly not up to the task of getting stains out of Roy’s white shirts, so he supposed that he should count himself lucky.

  


* * *

  


The fifth scotch was… not a scotch.

Roy knew a scam when he saw one, and he’d seen a few. The moment Ed set the glass down, he pointed at it and said, as calmly as possible, “That’s ginger ale.”

“Yeah,” Ed said. “Because I’m cutting you off.”

Hail Mary pass. “Isn’t that bad for your bottom line? Liquor has a much higher profit margin.”

“Guess so,” Ed said. He smirked again—slow, slanted, lethal. Then he tossed his hair over his shoulder like the most obscene shampoo commercial of Roy’s entire life—and he’d seen a few of those, too. “But I get the feeling you’re gonna give me a good tip anyway.”

“Diabolical,” Roy said. He put the straw in his mouth entirely so that he could work his tongue around it without ever taking his eyes off of Ed. “What time is it?”

“One forty,” Ed said. “You plannin’ on sticking around until closing and helping us clean up?”

“Yes,” Roy said.

He sucked on the straw, knowing it would hollow out his cheeks and define his jaw and generally make him irresistible.

Ed’s eyes narrowed, but the flush that had started creeping into his cheeks and his death grip on his rather bedraggled bar-wiping rag told a different story. “Is this some sort of long-game ploy to watch me bend over and pick up trash, or something?”

“Yes,” Roy said.

He sucked on the straw again, harder this time.

“Good,” Ed said. He smacked the cloth against his palm, which summoned a terrible damp noise on impact. “You can start with the bathrooms.”

Roy choked.

  


* * *

  


“You really don’t have to do this,” Jean said. “I can take him. He’s my… responsibility. Friend? Both.”

“I’m sober enough to remember that tomorrow,” Roy said.

“We’ll see,” Jean said.

“It’s fine, honestly,” Ed said. “It’s on my way home. I don’t mind. And he _did_ help.”

“He does that,” Jean said. “It’s annoying.”

“I’m remembering that, too,” Roy said. “I’m going to make a list. Color-coded. With binder tabs.”

“I didn’t think you were serious,” Ed said.

“I love binder tabs,” Roy said.

“About cleaning the bar,” Ed said. “You’re not on the payroll.”

“I’m still holding out hope of getting an honorary employee discount,” Roy said.

“No, you’re not,” Jean said.

“Stop stymying me,” Roy said. “It sounded very plausible.”

“How does he still talk like that?” Ed asked in a hushed voice.

“I have theories,” Jean said. “Some of them involve really boring spin-offs in the X-Men universe.”

“Someday,” Roy said, as grandiosely as he could muster, “I am going to find a _better_ bar with an owner who isn’t _unspeakably_ rude.”

“No, you’re not,” Jean said, elbowing his hip with a broad grin.

“No,” Roy said. “I’m not.”

Ed glanced around the little back parking lot where they were currently loitering, which was conspicuously empty except for a battered black Honda that had to be his. “So…”

“My ride’ll be here in just a minute,” Jean said. “We finished up a little early. You sure you’ve got a carseat big enough for this baby?”

“I want a divorce,” Roy said.

“No, you don’t,” Jean said.

“I’m sure,” Ed said. “It’s much more ominous to tell somebody that you know where they live when you mean it.”

“That’s… really fair, actually,” Jean said.

A familiar hybrid SUV turned the corner and slowed to a stop right up against the curb, tires crunching in the gravel and detritus in the gutter. The passenger side window lowered.

“Hey, hot stuff,” a gorgeous brunette called through to Jean, grinning broadly. “You want a _ride_ , if you know what I mean?”

“Hey, hon,” Jean said.

“Hi, Becca,” Roy said.

“Hi, Roy,” Rebecca said. “Is this the new kid? Hey, new kid.”

“Hi,” Ed said.

“I like your hair,” Rebecca said. She turned to Jean again. “You need a hand, boo?”

Roy’s soul died a little, but in a good way. At least they’d stopped one-upping each other in public just to try to see if they could make anybody puke.

“Yeah,” Jean said. “Roy’s useless.”

“Drunk,” Roy corrected.

“That’s what I said,” Jean said.

The worst part was that, semantic sins aside, he was probably right: Roy’s balance wasn’t much to write home about just now. Popping the sliding door open and unfolding the ramp would have required about all of the concentration he had in him, and there was a more-than-marginal chance that he would have faceplanted in the gutter at some point during the process. Getting Jean’s chair hooked in securely might have been beyond him altogether.

Rebecca made short work of it, though, and Jean beckoned Roy over through the open window and then put a hand on his shoulder and leaned close enough to say, “He’s working again tomorrow night, and I do _not_ want to hear about anything I don’t want to know, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” Roy said. “Thank you, sir. Will keep it in my pants, sir.”

“That’s the spirit,” Jean said.

“The spirit is boring,” Roy said.

“That’s an unrelated issue,” Jean said. “Hey, take it easy. Drink some water when you get home.”

“That’s pretty rich coming from someone who tried to kill me with a chicken wing,” Roy says.

“I wasn’t trying to _kill_ you,” Jean said. “I was just trying to cause moderate bodily harm and possibly indigestion.”

“Christmas is saved,” Roy said.

Jean shoved him, but not very hard, and not without hiding a grin first. “See if I have mercy on you ever again. All right, go already. And get some sleep, okay?”

Roy smack-patted his shoulder in return. “You, too. Goodnight, Becca.”

“’Bye, Roy!” she said, far too brightly for three in the morning, but apparently marriage did that to you or something. “Have fun! Be safe!”

“What do you mean, ‘be safe’?” Roy said. “You just met him. He probably drives better than I do.”

Rebecca kept the incredulous stare fixed on him for a few seconds before she turned it on Jean.

“I don’t know,” Jean said. “He’s like that.”

Roy’s hand twitched with the urge to hold it to the side of his head in distress. “Like what?”

“Oh, boy,” Ed said. An arm slid itself through Roy’s, elbow hooking around his, and Ed started dragging him off towards the solitary car in the lot. “G’night, Jean! Nice to meet you, Miss Rebecca!”

Roy could just hear Rebecca saying, “Oh, he’s _darling_ ” before the engine started, and the worst part was that he completely agreed.

Ed towed Roy over to the car, which was a mid-nineties Civic and had a manual lock. As Ed fished in a pocket for his keys—which shouldn’t have taken long, really; given how tight his jeans were, he had to have a recognizable imprint of any keychains on his thigh—Roy called up on his last reserves of social nicety for some pleasant small-talk:

“You know this is a steal-me car,” he said, “right?”

“My best friend’s a mechanic,” Ed said. He had recovered the elusive key. The keychain was a little orange plastic cat head. “I have no idea what she did, but nobody’s jacked it. Maybe she made a force field or something; I don’t know. You coming?”

“Well,” Roy said, “I was starting to be rather charmed by the prospect of standing in this parking lot staring at the picturesque overflowing dumpsters until sunrise, but now that you mention it—”

Ed opened the passenger door and gave him a shove—but a relatively gentle shove, which was a good sign; and a shove delivered while laughing, which was an excellent one.

  


* * *

  


Ed made Roy give him verbal directions, which was most likely either to try to keep them both awake or to distract Roy from staring at Ed’s hair.

When he pulled up to the curb, though, he paused, looked around, leaned closer to Roy to squint out the window, and then sat back, mouth pulling down at the corners. “I thought you said earlier that you were an architect.”

“I did,” Roy said. “And I am.”

Ed eyed him. Under moonlight and streetlamps, he was ethereal and beautiful and dangerous and delicate, and Roy just wanted to breathe him in forever.

“Shouldn’t you have a nice, swanky house?” Ed asked. “If you couldn’t find one, you could’ve _designed_ one. Isn’t that the point?”

“I get bored of nice, swanky houses,” Roy said. “Besides, I’m renting. I haven’t found a property that I like enough to sell a kidney in order to buy just yet.”

Ed had raised an eyebrow. “Kidneys going for more than livers these days?”

“I’m not sure,” Roy said, rather than _I believe my liver is past help, but thank you for the thought_. “I’ll do some market research before I make my deliberately creepy Craigslist posting.”

“Good,” Ed said. “You should never give up organs for less than they’re worth.”

“Absolutely not,” Roy said. He glanced out, glanced back at Ed, spent a moment trying to figure out where he’d put his hands, and discovered them knitted together very primly in his lap where they couldn’t reach out and stroke Ed’s hair even if they wanted to—settled on top of his phone, as it happened, because the clock in Ed’s car was two hours and fourteen minutes ahead for no discernible reason, and he’d had a moment of very unsettling, slightly-too-drunk mental whiplash and then double-checked his phone for the time.

Now that his hands had been recovered, though, he could take the phone in one of them and settle the other on the door handle, albeit very reluctantly.

“Thank you for the ride,” he said. “It’s really too kind. You should have imposed me on an Uber driver.”

“Like I said, it’s on my way,” Ed said, grinning at him. “Besides, then you wouldn’t have as much money to tip _me_ with.”

Roy smiled back at him. There would be more opportunities for that—more Fridays in Jean’s bar with a plate of Russian roulette wings and the smoky burn of scotch in the back of his throat and Elven hair and clever hands and nothing to lose because it was all just for fun. It was all just playful, and if he simply didn’t let himself invest too much, it wouldn’t ever hurt. He could do that. He’d done it at least… never… times… before. But it couldn’t be _that_ hard, and surely—

“Full disclosure,” Ed said. “If this is gonna be—a thing. Well—anything.”

“Beg pardon?” Roy said.

Ed said something that might have been—well, that was very probably— _What a dweeb_ under his breath, but then he reached out, grabbed Roy’s wrist, and hauled Roy over far enough to set Roy’s hand on his left knee.

Ed’s left knee was metal.

More specifically, it was a complex interlocking metal joint brilliantly designed to withstand a vast variety of different pressures and terrain conditions and other stresses and stimuli, but that was somewhere way off on the far side of the point.

Roy could feel Ed’s eyes on the side of his head, burning low and slow. Ed was ready to bail, but something like a sixth sense—an odd flicker of a premonition—told Roy that he really didn’t want to.

Which was quite nice, actually, since Roy didn’t either.

Roy ran the pad of his thumb over one of the grooves, let some of the appreciation through onto his face, and said, “This is an extremely elegant model” instead of _Jean recruits new hires a bit differently than most_.

“Thanks,” Ed said, and Roy was not even close to too drunk to notice the way that his shoulders relaxed.

Roy withdrew his hand before he put a debilitating knot in his back and settled in the seat again. He tried not to cling to his phone, but the ball was still in Ed’s court, and he had fallen down in tennis many times regardless of how calculatedly flattering his outfits were.

“Hey,” Ed said, elbowing him—which would have been moderately companionable had it not required quite such an effort for him to reach Roy’s arm from the other side of the center console. That little detail made it very deliberate. “Unlock your phone for me.”

Roy blinked down at the insensible dark-screened block in his hand, obliged, and then handed it over.

Ed took it, grinning like a _demon_. “God, you’re dumb.” He navigated swiftly into Roy’s contacts. “I like that in a man.”

“Ex _cuse_ you,” Roy said. “I’m drunk.”

“Same difference,” Ed said, tapping away. “There.” He passed Roy’s phone back. He’d added himself as _Ed_ and then the little shooting star emoji. “Text me tomorrow when you’re sober, so that I can send you some Renaissance nudes. Paninya’s gonna go fucking _feral_ over this.”

Roy blinked at the phone, and then at Ed, and then at the phone again.

“Oh,” he said.

Door handle. Heart in his throat. Head in the clouds.

“I will,” he said, pushing the door open and letting the cool air sweep in. If he was very lucky just once more tonight, it would artfully ruffle his hair as he stepped out. “Thank you again. Goodnight.”

“’Night, Roy,” Ed said.

Roy closed the door.

  


* * *

  


Roy was many things, but he was not an amateur: He’d drunk three glasses of water and brushed his teeth and put a Gatorade on the nightstand before he went to bed. When the alarm went off at eight, he nearly destroyed it with his bare fist; but when it went off again at nine, and he staggered off to the bathroom, he didn’t even feel _especially_ hungover.

It was a good thing that he hadn’t smashed his phone to smithereens or pitched it at the wall: there were worse ways to start a Saturday morning than by returning to a still-warm bed, chugging room-temperature Gatorade, and tapping gently over to compose a new text message.

 _Hope this is not a fake number, hope I am not waking you up (even if it is a fake number), and hope you’re well. Also hope I didn’t annoy you overmuch last night. Thank you again for driving me home. It was really an extraordinary pleasure to meet you_.

Truly, a masterpiece of understated grace, peerless tact, and unmistakable dignity, just like every other part of Roy’s existence.

Roy reflected that it was probably time to start making an effort to turn his life around now that he had a mental ranking of which Gatorade flavors tasted the least-bad when they weren’t cold. That had to be what Hughes would have wanted, although he’d probably be more than a little miffed that it had come to Gatorade classifications in the first place.

The phone buzzed where Roy had set it down on the comforter in a desperate last-ditch attempt to pretend that he was any person on Earth other than the one who had just sent that text message to a gorgeous young blond that he’d shamelessly flirted with while drinking for several hours.

Roy blinked at the screen, rubbed his eyes, picked up the phone, and blinked at it again.

_Yeah yeah yeah you’re welcome and you too and whatever. Paninya got here a couple minutes ago. Buckle your seatbelt, there’s gonna be some ART_

Roy did not know what that meant, but his graceful, tactful, dignified _??????_ in response was left on unread for the duration of the time that it took him to shower, dress, and pour himself some of the cereal that tasted like cardboard, which was a familiar Saturday morning punishment for Friday night’s excesses.

He received a new text while he was chewing laboriously through a distinctly more particle-board-flavored mouthful and scrolling aimlessly through some news, which made it all the easier to tap over to his messages.

The first photo sent him to two new heights of grace, tact, and dignity to round out the day: initially, he sprayed milk out of his nose; immediately thereafter, he almost choked to death on cardboard-flakes.

The photograph that had appeared, fully-formed and high-resolution, like Aphrodite rising from the sea, depicted Ed sprawled on what looked suspiciously like a coffee table with a cloth and some tasseled throw pillows on top, in front of a drape of brocade that might have been a window curtain. Roy might have mustered some interest for those details had Ed not been apparently naked except for a dark red scarf laid over just about the bare minimum to qualify as decency, with his hair streaming down and his shoulders relaxed and a masterpiece of a mechanical leg on full display. He was also surrounded by fruit in gold bowls and a scattering of houseplants, and he was holding up a half-peeled banana like he was about to deep-throat it.

Roy had to push his phone to the edge of the table for the better part of a minute while he wheezed for air. By the time he’d cleared his esophagus enough to facilitate breathing and picked up the phone again, there were three more photos in his text log.

The next one appeared to have been taken moments after the first, and depicted the instant where Ed had cracked and started laughing helplessly, which lit up his whole face to match his gorgeous hair. He’d twisted enough that the muscles in his chest and the flex of his biceps made Roy’s mouth water; and also enough that he’d dislodged the scarf enough to reveal that there were red-and-black-checked boxers on underneath. That was a moderate disappointment, but one that Roy was positive that he could live with.

The next photo after that caught Ed at the very instant that, still laughing, he lobbed a very aesthetically-pleasing bunch of grapes at the person behind the camera.

In the final one, a cinnamon-colored cat had leapt up onto the table and was trying to sniff Ed’s banana—which sounded like a very bad euphemism but wasn’t—and Ed was attempting to push it away gently, and another extremely pretty blond boy wearing a matched two-piece set of green flannel pajamas had appeared just at the edge of the frame with both arms outstretched towards it.

Roy sat back for several seconds, attempting to determine whether this was actually happening, or if perhaps he was having a very vivid and very kind hangover dream.

His throat still hurt like the damn Dickens, though, on account of having been jammed full of angry cardboard-flakes in a nastily unaerodynamic configuration, and his feet were cold, and his head ached a little, and he could still taste a tiny bit of Gatorade.

The odds were quite good that this was actually happening.

Based on that premise, he picked up his phone and wrote back: _This is without a doubt the best reward I have ever received for surviving an evening of mild debauchery_.

The fateful ellipsis lingered on his screen for a few seconds as Ed responded, only then to reveal a new bubble, which read:

_Holy shit I owe Pan money. You ARE even worse sober. Don’t you dare get all Pavlov on me here, this is a one-time deal, understand???_

_Duly noted,_ Roy wrote. _Please tell that banana that I am simmering in jealousy of its proximity to your mouth. And please pet the cat for me._

The ellipsis appeared, and then disappeared, and then appeared again, and then disappeared again, and then appeared, and then—

_Hello, this is Al! I’m Ed’s brother. If you’re not nice to him, I will do things to you that I am not going to transcribe in a text message just in case it ends up as evidence in the hands of the police and gets interpreted as a confession. If you are nice to him, you can pet the cat all you like. Her name is Peaches. (We are aware that she is the wrong color to be called ‘Peaches’, but it was a difficult time. It was also a time before the peach emoji on iPhone had quite such a well-established secondary meaning, which has made all subsequent times also a difficult time.) Anyway, it’s nice to meet you! I hope._

Roy had never seen such a threatening smiley face emoji in his life.

Time for coffee, and then more coffee, and then cleaning the milk and cardboard shreds off of his kitchen table, and then some text-based flirting superior to anything the world had ever seen.

Damn it. He was going to have to send Jean a thank-you card.


End file.
